The Moken Way (Part 4)
DestinAsian – Feb/Mar 2003

In the streets of Myeik, pre-teen boy monks in re-brown robes still carry their Buddhist begging bowls through town at dawn: Tamil Hindu women still turn up in the market in bright pink saris: bearded Muslim men still stroll the Islamic quarter in skullcaps and djellabas: Asian-featured Da Silvas and Da Castros still attend services at the Portuguese and British colonial structures crumble alongside Burmese vernacular buildings in the center of town. In the mornings and evenings, lungi-clad citizens gather to bathe at street-corner wells, and oil lamps flicker inside wooden houses at night.

ON OUR WAY BACK TO WA ALE Island, I lobby-hard- to search for Moken flotillas in an outer set of islands. Frost vetoes my requests; Clients await him back at the base camp. As we speed over the waves, attempting to make the return trip in a single day, I wonder why the Moken hold such fascination for me. I suspect that I’ve fallen into that much-analyzed travelers’ cliché –the nostalgic yearning to witness a way of life which I idealize because I was born too late to rally know it. As I wade ashore on Wa Ale in the early evening, one of the new kayaking clients greets me and casually mentions that he saw a small flotilla of sea gypsies on Kanzagyi (Wa Ale’s sister island) earlier in the day. I splash back out to the seal One and bully Frost into taking me there. 

Since the sea gypsies are known to flee at the sound of a boat motor, we anchor off the Kanzagyi coast and unload the kayaks into the water. As I paddle toward shore, I spot a cluster of stilted, chest high structures similar to the collapsed thatched huts I found along the channel several days ago. Then I notice a couple of brown skinned children digging for sand worms in a broad tidal flat.

Not sure what else to do, I beach my kayak and start toward the huts. The children give me a cursory glance before returning to their work. Beyond them, a wide-keeled Moken boat sits slightly askew in the shallow water. Though this black hulled craft sports a diesel engine, curved notches in the bow and stern (symbolizing a mouth and an anus) hold true to traditional animist detailing.

When I arrive at the beachside encampment, a couple of yellow dogs jog up and sniff at my ankles. A man who looks to be in his early twenties stumbles out from a makeshift kitchen area and offers me a tin cup full of strong-smelling rice whiskey. He’s wearing a tattered pair of shorts, and his skin is covered with a wormy-looking case of dermatitis. Declining the whiskey, I force a smile at half a dozen adults and children who squat next to a cooking fire. Everyone is dressed in the Burmese fashion-lungis or shorts under T-shirts. Apart from their coffee brown skin and a reddish tint to the children’s hair, the Moken don’t look radically different from their Burmese and Thai neighbors. The one striking distinction, however, is that almost all of the sea gypsies look sick : Most of the children are covered in rashes and insect bites, and many of the adults have feverish, yellow tinted eyes. 

When Frost and the others show up, we attempt conversation. Although the majority of the sea gypsies can speak only their own, Malay-influenced tongue, our interpreter locates a Moken teen who knows some Burmese. A dozen or so sea gypsies gather as my questions and his answers get translated from English to Burmese to Moken and back.

Apparently, these folks come from a Moken flotilla that’s currently anchored at nearby Clara Island. Since their boat engine broke sown in open water several days ago, they paddled to Kanzagyi to set up a temporary camp. “There’s a good source of freshwater on this island,” an older man tells me. “It’s common for us to stop here during the dry season. “Don’t you ever stop at Marghon Galet village?” I ask. “ Sometimes. But there are too many Burmese there now. It’s hard to find food or gather sea cucumbers, because the Burmese harvest them first. “Is there enough food for you on this island?” “There’s usually plenty to eat here,” the old man says, gesturing at the tidal flat. “ And sometimes we dig for shells in the deeper water.”

“All our shells were stolen two days ago,” interjects the young man with the skin rash. A tough-looking Moken man in a goatee and a soiled Honda Racing Team jacket clarifies. “Some fishermen raided the camp when the men were gone two days ago. Three Burmese and a Karen, they threatened the women and stole the shells, our rice, and all the alcohol that wasn’t hidden.”

“ Can you report these men to the authorities?” I ask. The man scoffs. “We can report it to the army after we get back to Clara island, but that won’t help. They’ll just ask us to make a report, and non of us can write Burmese.”

“Will they let you write it in Moken?” The sea gypsies stare at me in silence. I’ve forgotten that the Moken have never used a written language. Missionaries transliterated their tongue, but the sea gypsies showed little interest in the written form.

Taking us to the cooking area, the nomads offer up boiled mollusks and talk about the trials and difficulties of the last few days. Simply listening to such details is enough to temper my sentimental views of their lives. Ironically, the most significant threat to Moken culture that the arrival of tourism could post is the in creased exposure to literacy, medicine and industry. To view such changes with too much optimism, however, is to misunderstand the Moken way of seeing the world. 

As the gathering darkness sends us back to the kayaks and out to sea, I’m tempted to ask Frost to leave me at the sea gypsy camp for the night. It’s a fanciful notion-sleeping in a thatched hut and waking at sawn to gather seashells with the nomads but finally I decide against it. After all, the Moken never invited me to stay.